What bird are you in the grass-tops? Your poise is enough of an answer, With your wing-tips like up-curving fingers Of the slow-moving hands of a dancer ...
And what is so nameless as beauty, Which poets, who give it a name, Are only unnaming forever?— Content, though it go, that it came.
O there were lights and laughter And the motions to and fro Of people as they enter And people as they go ...
And there were many voices Vying at the feast, But mostly I remember Yours—who spoke the least.
“Lincoln?— Well, I was in the old Second Maine, The first regiment in Washington from the Pine Tree State. Of course I didn’t get the butt of the clip; We was there for guardin’ Washington— We was all green.
“I ain’t never ben to the theayter in my life— I didn’t know how to behave. I ain’t never ben since. I can see as plain as my hat the box where he sat in When he was shot. I can tell you, sir, there was a panic When we found our President was in the shape he was in! Never saw a soldier in the world but what liked him.
“Yes, sir. His looks was kind o’ hard to forget. He was a spare man, An old farmer. Everything was all right, you know, But he wasn’t a smooth-appearin’ man at all— Not in no ways; Thin-faced, long-necked, And a swellin’ kind of a thick lip like.
“And he was a jolly old fellow—always cheerful; He wasn’t so high but the boys could talk to him their own ways. While I was servin’ at the Hospital He’d come in and say, ‘You look nice in here,’ Praise us up, you know. And he’d bend over and talk to the boys— And he’d talk so good to ’em—so close— That’s why I call him a farmer. I don’t mean that everything about him wasn’t all right, you understand, It’s just—well, I was a farmer— And he was my neighbor, anybody’s neighbor. I guess even you young folks would ’a’ liked him.”
Outside hove Shasta, snowy height on height, A glory; but a negligible sight, For you had often seen a mountain-peak But not my paper. So we came to speak ... A smoke, a smile,—a good way to commence The comfortable exchange of difference! You a young engineer, five feet eleven, Forty-five chest, with football in your heaven, Liking a road-bed newly built and clean, Your fingers hot to cut away the green Of brush and flowers that bring beside a track The kind of beauty steel lines ought to lack,— And I a poet, wistful of my betters, Reading George Meredith’s high-hearted letters, Joining betweenwhile in the mingled speech Of a drummer, circus-man, and parson, each Absorbing to himself—as I to me And you to you—a glad identity!